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Library 

OF  THE 

University  of  NortK  Carolina 

This  book  was  presented  by  the  family 
of  the  late 

kp;mp  plummer  battle,  '49 

President  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina 
from  1876  to  1890 


Cp  970.1UU58 


OF 


IJXV.  History  Committee 


BY 

JUDGE  GEORGE  L.  CHRISTIAN 

RICHMOND,  VIRGINIA 


REPORT 


OF 


U.C.V.  HISTORY  COMMITTEE 


BY 


JUDGE  GEORGE  L.  CHRISTIAN 

Richmond,  Virginia 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2013 


http://archive.org/details/reportofucvhistoOOchri 


REPORT 

OF 


U.  C.  V.  History  Committee. 


Within  the  limits  prescribed  for  this  paper  it  is  impossible 
to  discuss  with  any  degree  of  satisfaction  the  issues  involved 
in  the  great  conflict  between  the  North  and  the  South  from 
1861  to  1865.  These  have,  however,  been  so  fully  discussed 
by  other  members  of  this  committee  on  former  occasions,  that 
but  little  remains  to  add  to  those  discussions. 

In  a  recent  work,  with  the  somewhat  arrogant  title,  "The 
True  History  of  the  Civil  War,"  the  writer  begins  by  saying: 
"The  seeds  of  dissolution  between  the  North  and  the  South 
were  carried  to  Virginia  in  the  ships  commanded  by  Newport 
and  to  Massachusetts  in  the  Mayflower.  Each  kind  fell  upon 
soil  well  adapted  to  nourish  its  characteristics.  .  .  .  There 
was  in  the  beginning  an  almost  imperceptible  rift  between 
the  people  of  the  North  and  those  of  the  South.  This  grad- 
ually widened  until,  notwithstanding  the  necessity  for  union, 
a  separation  in  sentiment,  thought,  and  custom  arose.  This 
estrangement  developed  until  it  gave  to  the  people  of  the 
North  and  the  South  the  aspect  of  two  races  manifesting 
toward  each  other  all  the  antipathy  of  rival  and  dissimilar 
nations  and  in  their  disagreements  rendering  impossible  either 
sympathy  with  each  other's  standpoint  or  patient  listening  to 
each  other's  contention." 

Without  intimating  any  opinion  as  to  how  far  all  the  other 
statements  contained  in  this  work  warrant  the  author  in 
giving  it  the  title  selected,  a  few  glances  at  history  will  con- 
vince the  most  skeptical  that  the  foregoing  statement  is  well 
founded. 

In  1775,  when  Washington's  army  was  in  front  of  Boston, 
that  great  patriot-soldier  issued  a  stern  order  threatening 
severe  punishment  to  any  man  found  guilty  of  saying  or  doing 

(3) 


_i  Report  of  U.  C.  V.  History  Committee. 

anything  to  aggravate  what  he  termed  "the  existing  sectional 
feeling."  And  during  the  same  year  when  Peyton  Randolph, 
of  Virginia,  the  first  President  of  the  Continental  Congress, 
died,  his  brother-in-law,  Benjamin  Harrison,  also  from  Vir- 
ginia, was  nominated  for  that  position ;  but  as  John  Han- 
cock, of  Massachusetts,  was  likewise  nominated,  it  is  said  that 
Mr.  Harrison,  "to  avoid  any  sectional  jealousy  or  unkindness 
of  feeling  between  the  Northern  and  Southern  delegates  at 
so  momentous  a  crisis,"  had  his  own  name  withdrawn  and 
insisted  on  the  election  of  Mr.  Hancock.  And  so,  too,  in  the 
Virginia  Convention  of  1788  Mr.  Henry,  in  opposing  the 
adoption  of  the  Federal  Constitution,  after  pointing  out  the 
provisions  to  which  he  objected,  and  in  which  his  almost 
prophetic  ken  saw  dangers  lurking,  which  have  since  been 
realized,  said  after  all  that  he  did  not  so  much  object  to  the 
form  of  the  instrument  as  he  did  to  the  character  and  dis- 
positions of  those  with  whom  we  were  forming  the  compact. 
And  another  distinguished  Virginian  with  fervid  eloquence 
exclaimed  that  our  oppressions  under  the  compact  would  be 
"worse  than  British  tyranny." 

With  these  early  and  seemingly  innate  antipathies,  stimu- 
lated and  developed  by  growing  and  conflicting  interests,  aris- 
ing out  of  tariffs,  acquisitions  of  territory,  and  other  causes, 
the  "irrepressible  conflict,"  as  Seward  termed  it,  would  seem 
necessarily  only  a  question  of  time. 

As  to  the  real  cause  or  causes  which  precipitated  that  con- 
flict, there  have  been,  and  still  are,  differences  of  opinion.  In 
our  view  the  settlement  of  this  question  is  secondary,  and 
the  vital  questions  to  be  determined  are : 

(a)  Which  side,  if  either,  was  responsible  for  the  existence 
of  the  cause  or  causes?  And  if  slavery  was  the  cause,  as 
some  allege,  which  side  was  guilty  of  wrong-doing  in  dealing 
with  that  cause f 

(&)  Which  was  the  aggressor  in  provoking  the  conflict ? 

(c)  Which  side  had  the  legal  right  to  do  what  was  done? 

(d)  Which  side  conducted  itself  the  better,  and  according 
to  the  rules  of  civilized  warfare,  pending  the  conflict? 

It  seems  to  us  that  an  answer  to  these  questions  is  per- 
tinent at  all  times,  and  at  this  distance  from  the  conflict  they 


Report  of  U.  C.  V.  History  Committee.  5 

can    be    discussed    dispassionately    without    engendering    sec- 
tional bad  feeling. 

Our  quondam  enemies,  knowing,  as  it  seems  to  us  they 
must  know,  that  the  evidence  on  every  other  point  is  over- 
whelmingly against  them,  and  relying  on  the  sentiment  of  the 
world  now  existing  against  slavery,  are  prone  to  charge  that 
the  South  fought  for  the  perpetuation  and  extension  of  that 
institution;  or,  to  put  it  in  the  brief  and  common  form,  they 
charge  (as  some  of  our  younger  people  in  their  ignorance 
seem  to  believe)   that  "slavery  was  the  cause  of  the  war." 

It  would  seem  to  the  unprejudiced  mind,  that  the  mere  state- 
ment of  the  fact  (which,  we  believe,  was  a  fact)  that  more 
than  eighty  per  cent  of  the  Confederate  soldiers  held  no 
slaves,  that  General  Lee,  our  representative  soldier,  freed  his 
slaves  before  the  war,  whilst  General  Grant,  the  representa- 
tive soldier  of  the  North,  held  on  to  his  until  they  were 
freed  by  the  results  of  the  war,  and  the  further  fact  that 
General  Lee  said  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  that  if  he 
owned  all  the  slaves  in  the  South  and  could  by  freeing  them 
save  the  Union  he  would  do  so  with  the  stroke  of  his  pen, 
ought  to  furnish  a  satisfactory  refutation  of  this  unjust 
charge. 

*But  let  us  admit,  for  the  sake  of  the  argument  only,  that 
the  charge  is  true.  How,  then,  does  the  case  stand  as  to  us 
both  on  the  law  and  the  facts? 

It  will  not  be  charged  by  the  greatest  enemy  of  the  South 
that  it  was  in  any  way  responsible,  either  for  the  existence  of 
slavery  or  for  inaugurating  that  vilest  of  traffics — the  African 
slave  trade.  On  the  contrary,  history  attests  that  slavery  was 
forced  upon  this  country  by  England  against  the  earnest 
protests  of  the  South  as  well  as  of  the  North  when  the  States 
were  Colonies  und'.r  the  control  of  that  country;  that  "the 
first  statute  establishing  slavery  in  America  is  to  be  found 
in  the  famous  Code  of  Fundamentals  or  Body  of  the  Liber- 
ties of  the  Massachusetts  Colony  of  New  England,  adopted 
in  December,  1641 ;"  that  the  "Desire,"  one  of  the  very  first 
vessels  built  in  Massachusetts,  was  fitted  out  for  carrying  on 
the  slave  trade;  "that  the  traffic  became  so  popular  that  great 
attention  was  paid  to  it  by  the  New  England  shipowners,  and 


6  Report  of  U.  C.  V.  History  Committee. 

that  they  practically  monopolized  it  for  a  number  of  years." 
("The  True  Civil  War,"  pp.  28.  29,  30.)  And  history  further 
attests  that  Virginia  was  the  first  State,  North  or  South,  to 
prohibit  the  slave  traffic  from  Africa,  and  that  Georgia  was  the 
first  to  incorporate  that  prohibition  in  her  Constitution. 

We  have  no  desire  to  say  unkind  things  about  the  North. 
But  it  is  easy  to  show,  that  as  long  as  slavery  existed  there, 
as  it  did  in  all  the  Colonies  when  independence  was  declared, 
the  treatment  of  slaves  by  the  people  of  that  section  was  as 
harsh  as,  if  not  more  so  than,  was  ever  known  in  any  part  of 
the  South.  Not  only  is  this  true,  but  it  is  also  easy  to  show 
that  as  long  as  the  people  of  the  North  were  the  owners  of 
slaves  they  regarded  and  treated  and  disposed  of  them  as 
"property."  just  as  the  people  of  England  had  done  since 
1713,  when  slaves  were  held  to  be  "merchandise"  by  the 
twelve  judges  of  that  country,  with  the  venerable  Holt  at  their 
head.  We  could  further  show  that  slavery  existed  at  the 
North  just  as  long  as  it  was  profitable  to  have  it  there;  that 
the  moral  and  religious  sense  of  that  section  was  only  heard 
to  complain  of  that  institution  after  it  was  found  to  be  un- 
profitable and  after  the  people  of  that  section  had  for  the 
most  part  sold  their  slaves  to  the  people  of  the  South ;  and 
that,  after  Whitney's  invention  of  the  cotton  gin,  whrch 
wrought  such  a  revolution  in  the  production  of  cotton  at  the 
South  as  to  cause  slave  labor  greatly  to  increase  in  value,  and 
which  induced  many  Northern  men  to  engage  in  that  produc- 
tion, these  men  almost  invariably  purchased  their  slaves  for 
that  purpose,  and  many  of  these  owned  them  when  the  war 
broke  out. 

The  South  was  then  in  no  sense  responsible  for  the  ex- 
istence of  slavery  within  its  borders,  but  it  was  brought  there 
against  its  will ;  it  was  clearly  recognized  and  attempted  to 
be  controlled  and  protected  by  the  Constitution — the  supreme 
law  of  the  land — and  the  people  of  the  South,  not  believing 
that  any  other  or  better  disposition  could  be  made  of  the 
slaves  than  by  holding  them  in  bondage,  only  continued  to 
do  this. 

In  the  meantime  numerous  efforts  were  made,  both  by 
Southern  States  and  by  individuals,  to  abolish  the  institution, 


Report  of  U.  C.  V.  History  Committee.  7 

and  it  is  the  almost  universal  belief  now  that  these  efforts 
would  have  been  gradually  successful,  but  for  the  harsh  and 
unjust  criticisms  of  the  Southern  people  by  some  of  those 
at  the  North  and  the  outrageous,  illegal,  and  incendiary  in- 
terferences by  the  abolitionists  and  their  emissaries.  As  early 
as  1769  the  House  of  Burgesses  of  Virginia  tried  to  abolish 
slavery  in  Virginia,  but  was  prohibited  by  the  veto  of  George 
III.,  then  King  of  England,  "in  the  interests  of  English  com- 
merce." And  throughout  the  period  from  1776  to  1832,  when 
the  work  of  the  abolitionists  first  began  to  be  felt,  the  ques- 
tion of  how  to  accomplish  emancipation  engaged  the  thought 
of  some  of  the  most  eminent  men  of  Virginia  and  other 
Southern   States. 

Mr.  George  Lunt,  a  distinguished  lawyer  of  Massachusetts, 
in  his  interesting  work,  entitled  "Origin  of  the  Late  War," 
in  which  he  shows  that  the  North  was  the  aggressor  and 
wrongdoer  throughout,  says  :  "Slavery,  in  the  popular  sense, 
was  the  cause  of  war,  just  as  property  is  the  cause  of  rob- 
bery." 

Whilst  we  do  not  indorse  this  statement,  looking  at  the 
subject  from  the  view-point  of  a  Southerner,  yet  if  it  were 
true,  surely  there  is  nothing  in  it  from  which  the  people  of 
the  North  can  take  any  comfort  or  credit  to  themselves. 

But  so  anxious  are  our  former  enemies  to  convince  the 
world  that  the  South  did  fight  for  the  perpetuation  of  slavery 
that  some  of  them  have,  either  wittingly  or  unwittingly,  re- 
sorted to  misrepresentations  or  misinterpretations  of  some  of 
the  sayings  of  our  representative  men  to  try  to  establish  this 
as  a  fact.  A  noted  instance  of  this  is  found  in  the  oft- 
repeated  charge  that  the  late  Mr.  Alexander  H.  Stephens, 
Vice  President  of  the  Confederacy,  had  said  in  his  famous 
speech,  delivered  at  Savannah  in  February,  1861,  that  "slavery 
was  the  corner  stone  of  the  Confederacy." 

We  have  heard  this  charge  made  by  one  of  the  most  en- 
lightened and  liberal  men  of  the  North,  and  yet  we  have  at 
hand  utterances  from  this  same  Northerner  tantamount  to 
what  Mr.  Stephens  said  in  that  speech.  Mr.  Stephens  was 
speaking  of  the  Confederacy,  just  then  organized,  and  con- 
trasting some  of  the  principles  on  which  it  was  founded  with 


8  Report  of  U.  C.  V.  History  Committee. 

some  of  those  of  the  Republican  party,  then  coming  into 
power  for  the  first  time,  and  he  said :  "Our  government  is 
founded  on  exactly  the  opposite  idea  (that  the  two  races, 
black  and  white,  are  equal);  its  foundations  are  laid;  its 
corner  stone  rests  upon  the  great  truth  that  the  negro  is  not 
the  equal  of  the  white  man;  that  slavery,  subordination  to 
the  superior  race,  is  his  (the  negro's)  natural  and  normal 
condition." 

Now  it  will  be  observed  in  the  first  place  that  Mr.  Stephens 
said  the  "corner  stone"  of  the  Confederacy  "rests  upon  the 
great  truth  that  the  negro  is  not  the  equal  of  the  white  man." 
And  isn't  this  fact  recognized  as  true  to-day  in  every  part 
of  this  land? 

But  hear  now  the  utterances  of  this  liberal  and  cultured 
Northerner  on  the  same  subject  when  he  says  as  he  does: 
"The  Africans  are  distinctly  an  inferior  order  of  being,  not 
only  in  the  South,  or  slave  States,  but  throughout  the  North 
also,  not  entitled  to  unrestricted  pursuit  on  equal  terms  of 
life,  liberty,  and  happiness." 

Is  there  any  difference  in  principle  between  these  two  ut- 
terances? If,  as  this  distinguished  Northerner  asserts,  and 
as  every  one  knows  to  be  true,  the  negroes  are  "distinctly 
an  inferior  order  of  being"  and  "not  entitled  to  the  unre- 
stricted pursuit  on  equal  terms  [with  the  whites]  of  life, 
liberty,  and  happiness,"  does  not  this  make  "subordination  to 
the  superior  race  his  natural  and  normal  condition,"  as  Mr. 
Stephens  says? 

But  hear  now  what  Mr.  Lincoln,  the  great  demigod  of  the 
North,  had  to  say  on  this  subject  in  a  speech  delivered  at 
Charleston,  111.,  in  1858,  when  he  said :  "I  will  say,  then, 
that  I  am  not  now,  nor  never  have  been,  in  favor  of  bringing 
about  in  any  way  the  social  or  political  equality  of  the  white 
and  black  races.  I  am  not  now,  nor  never  have  been,  in  favor 
of  making  voters  or  jurors  of  negroes,  nor  of  qualifying  them 
to  hold  office,  nor  of  intermarriage  with  white  people ;  and  I 
will  say,  in  addition  to  this,  that  there  is  a  physical  difference 
between  the  white  and  black  races  which,  I  believe,  will  for- 
ever forbid  the  two  races  living  together  on  terms  of  social 
and  political  equality.     Inasmuch  as  they  cannot  so  live,  while 


Report  of  U.  C.  V.  History  Committee.  9 

they  do  remain  together,  there  must  be  a  position  of  superior 
and  inferior,  and  I,  as  much  as  any  other  man,  am  in  favor 
of  having  the  superior  position  assigned  to  the  white  man." 

Again  we  ask :  Is  there  any  difference  in  principle  between 
what  is  here  said  by  Mr.  Lincoln  and  what  was  said  by  Mr. 
Stephens  in  his  famous  "corner  stone"  speech  ? 

And,  notwithstanding  Mr.  Lincoln  issued  his  "Emancipation 
Proclamation"  eighteen  months  later,  he  said  in  his  first  in- 
augural :  "I  have  no  purpose,  directly  or  indirectly,  to  inter- 
fere with  the  institution  of  slavery  in  the  States  where  it 
exists.  I  believe  I  have  no  lawful  right  to  do  so,  and  I  have 
no  inclination  to  do  so." 

Could  he  have  used  stronger  language  to  show  that  he  be- 
lieved not  only  in  the  legality  of  the  position  of  the  South 
on  the  subject  of  slavery,  but  that  he  believed  in  the  pro- 
priety of  that  position  as  well? 

Mr.  Toombs  said  in  a  speech  delivered  in  Boston  in  1856 : 
"The  white  is  the  superior  and  the  black  the  inferior,  and  that 
subordination,  with  or  without  law,  will  be  the  status  of  the 
African  in  this  mixed  society.  Therefore  it  is  to  the  interest 
of  both,  and  especially  to  the  black  race,  that  this  status 
should  be  fixed,  controlled,  and  protected  by  law."  And  this 
is  just  as  true  to-day  as  it  was  when  this  statement  was  made 
by  this  great  statesman  in  1856. 

But  there  is  this  remarkable  fact  in  connection  with  slavery 
and  its  relations  to  the  war,  which  we  have  not  seen  else- 
where referred  to,  and  which  is  to  our  mind  a  conclusive 
refutation  of  the  charge  that  the  continuation  or  the  ex- 
tinction of  slavery  had  any  influence  whatever  on  the  con- 
duct of  the  Southern  people,  and  especially  that  of  the  Con- 
federate soldier  in  that  war. 

The  writer  belonged  to  one  of  the  three  companies  in  the 
army,  the  personnel  of  which  is  so  vividly  described  by  the 
author  of  "Four  Years  under  Marse  Robert,"  in  which  there 
were  serving  as  privates  many  full  graduates  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Virginia  and  other  leading  colleges  both  North  and 
South.  In  these  companies  a  variety  of  subjects  pertaining 
to  the  war,  religion,  politics,  philosophy,  literature,  and  what 
not,  were  discussed  with  intelligence  and  often  with  anima- 


io  Report  of  U.  C.  V.  History  Committee. 

tion  and  ability,  and  yet  neither  he  nor  any  of  his  comrades 
can  recall  the  fact  that  they  ever  heard  the  subject  of  slavery 
or  the  relations  of  the  slaves  to  the  war,  referred  to  in  any 
way  during  that  period,  except  that  when  it  was  determined 
to  put  slaves  in  our  army,  a  violent  protest  against  doing  so 
went  up  from  the  ranks,  and  the  only  thing  which  even  par- 
tially reconciled  our  men  to  this  proposed  action  was  the 
knowledge  of  the  fact  that  it  had  the  sanction  and  approval 
of  General  Lee.  We  have  inquired  of  comrades  of  various 
other  commands  about  this,  and  with  the  like  result.  Do  men 
fight  for  a  thing  or  a  cause  they  never  speak  of  or  discuss?. 
It  seems  to  us  that  to  ask  this  question  is  to  furnish  the  an- 
swer. 

Not  only  is  the  foregoing  statement  true,  but  with  the  ex- 
ception of  the  steps  taken  to  send  negroes  to  help  erect  forti- 
fications, employing  them  as  laborers,  etc.,  but  little  considera- 
tion seems  to  have  been  given  them  or  of  their  status  to  the 
war  either  in  the  Congress  or  the  Cabinet  of  the  Confederacy. 
The  reasons  for  this  are  manifest  to  those  of  us  who  lived 
in  those  days,  but  a  word  of  explanation  may  be  necessary  to 
those  who  have  since  come  on  the  stage  of  life.  In  the  first 
place  slavery,  as  it  existed  in  the  South,  was  patriarchal  in 
its  character;  the  slaves  (servants,  as  we  called  them)  were 
regarded  and  treated  as  members  of  the  families  to  which 
they  severally  belonged;  with  rare  exceptions,  they  were 
treated  with  kindness  and  consideration,  and  frequently  the 
relations  between  the  slave  and  his  owner  were  those  of  real 
affection  and  confidence.  As  Mr.  Lunt,  the  Boston  writer, 
from  whom  we  have  already  quoted,  says  :  "The  negroes  were 
perfectly  contented  with  their  lot.  In  general  they  were  not 
only  happy  in  their  condition,  but  proud  of  it." 

Their  owners  trusted  them  with  their  families,  their  farms, 
and^their  affairs,  and  this  confidence  was  rarely  betrayed — 
scarcely  ever,  unless  they  were  forced  to  violate  their  trusts 
by  coming  in  contact  with  the  Federal  armies,  or  were  be- 
guiled and  betrayed  themselves  by  mean  and  designing  white 
men.  The  truth  is,  both  the  white  and  the  black  people  of 
the  South  regarded  the  Confederate  cause  alike  as  their  cause, 
and  looked  to  its  success  with  almost,  if  not  quite,  equal  anxiety 


Report  of  U.  C.  V.  History  Committee.  i  i 

and  delight.  A  most  striking  illustration  of  this  and  of  the 
readiness  of  the  slaves  to  fight  even,  if  necessary,  for  the  Con- 
federate cause  is  furnished  by  the  following  incident :  In 
February,  1865,  when  negro  troops  had  been  authorized  to  be 
enrolled  in  the  Confederate  army,  there  were  employed  at 
Jackson  Hospital,  near  Richmond,  seventy-two  negro  men.  The 
surgeon  in  charge,  the  late  Dr.  F.  W.  Hancock,  of  Richmond, 
had  these  men  formed  in  line ;  and  after  asking  them  "if  they 
would  be  willing  to  take  up  arms  to  protect  their  masters' 
families,  homes,  and  their  own  from  an  attacking  foe,  sixty 
out  of  seventy-two  responded  that  they  would  volunteer  to 
go  to  the  trenches  and  fight  the  enemy  to  the  bitter  end." 
("War  Rebellion  Records,"  Series  IV.,  Volume  II. ,  p.  1193.) 

At  the  date  he*re  referred  to  we  know  that  the  life  of  the 
Confederate  soldier  was  one  of  the  greatest  hardship  and 
peril,  and  the  fact  that  five  out  of  every  six  of  these  negroes 
were  then  ready  to  volunteer  and  go  to  the  trenches  showed 
conclusively  how  truly  they  regarded  the  Confederate  cause 
as  their  cause  as  well  as  that  of  the  white  people  of  the  South. 
Indeed,  we  doubt  if  a  larger  per  cent  of  the  whites  in  any 
part  of  the  country  would  have  volunteered  to  go  to  the  front 
at  that  stage  of  the  war.  If,  then,  it  were  true,  as  alleged, 
that  the  white  people  of  the  South  were  fighting  for  slavery, 
does  it  not  necessarily  follow  that  the  slaves  themselves  were 
ready  and  willing  to  fight  for  it  too?  One  of  these  proposi- 
tions is  just  as  true  as  the  other. 

We  think  we  have  shown  then  that  even  if  we  admit  that 
slavery  was,  as  falsely  charged,  the  "cause  of  the  war"  the 
South  was  in  no  way  responsible  for  the  existence  of  that 
cause ;  but  it  was  a  condition  forced  upon  it,  one  recognized 
by  the  supreme  law  of  the  land,  one  which  the  South  dealt 
with  legally  and  justly  as  contemplated  by  that  law,  and  his- 
tory shows  that  in  every  respect,  and  in  every  instance,  the 
aggressions  and  violations  of  the  law  were  committed  by  the 
North.  Mr.  Lunt  says :  "Of  four  several  compromises  be- 
tween the  two  sections  of  country  since  the  Revolutionary 
War,  each  has  been  kept  by  the  South  and  violated  by  the 
North."  Indeed,  we  challenge  the  North  to  point  out  one 
single  instance  in  which  the   South  violated  the  Constitution 


12  Report  of  U.  C.  V.  History  Committee. 

or  any  of  the  laws  made  in  pursuance  thereof;  whilst,  on  the 
contrary,  fourteen  of  the  Northern  States  passed  acts  nulli- 
fying the  fugitive  slave  law,  passed  by  Congress  in  obedience 
to  the  Constitution,  denounced  and  defied  the  decisions  of  the 
Supreme  Court,  and  Judge  Black,  of  Pennsylvania,  says  of 
the  abolitionists :  "They  applauded  John  Brown  to  the  echo 
for  a  series  of  the  basest  murders  on  record.  They  did  not 
conceal  their  hostility  to  the  Federal  and  State  governments 
nor  deny  their  enmity  to  all  laws  which  protected  white  men. 
The  Constitution  stood  in  their  way,  and  they  cursed  it  bit- 
terly. The  Bible  was  quoted  against  them,  and  the}'  reviled 
God  the  Almighty  himself." 

(2)  Our  next  inquiry  is:  Which  was  the  aggressor  in  pro- 
voking the  conflict? 

Mr.  Hallam,  in  his  "Constitutional  History  of  England," 
states  a  universally  recognized  principle  when  he  says :  "The 
aggressor  in  war — that  is.  he  who  begins  it — is  not  the  first 
who  uses  force,  but  the  first  who  renders  force  necessary." 

We  think  we  have  already  shown,  by  Northern  author- 
ities, that  the  North  was  the  aggressor  and  violator  of  the 
Constitution  and  of  the  legal  rights  of  the  South  in  reference 
to  what  they  allege  to  be  the  "cause  of  the  war,"  and  it  is  easy 
to  show,  by  like  authorities,  that  it  was  clearly  the  aggressor 
in  bringing  on  the  war. 

On  the  /th  of  April,  1861,  President  Davis  said:  "With 
the  Lincoln  administration  rests  the  responsibility  of  precip- 
itating a  collision  and  the  fearful  evils  of  the  cruel  war." 

In  his  reply  to  Mr.  Lincoln's  call  for  Virginia's  quota  of 
seventy-five  thousand  troops  to  coerce  the  South,  on  April 
15,  1861,  Governor  Letcher  said:  "You  have  chosen  to  in- 
augurate civil  war,  and  you  can  get  no  troops  from  Virginia 
for  any  such  purpose." 

But  we  are  not  content  to  rest  this  question  on  the  state- 
ments of  these  Southern  authorities,  as  high  as  they  are,  but 
will  let  Northern  writers  say  what  they  think  about  this  im- 
portant question. 

Mr.  Lunt  says  in  reference  to  Mr.  Lincoln  sending  the  fleet 
to  reenforce  Sumter  in  April,  1861  :  "Tt  was  intended  to  draw 
the  fire  of  the  Confederates,  and  was  a  silent  aggression  with 


Report  of  U.  C.  V.  History  Committee. 


*3 


the  object  of  producing  an  active  aggression  from  the  other 
side." 

Mr.  Benjamin  J.  Williams,  another  Massachusetts  writer, 
says:  "The  South  was  invaded  and  a  war  of  subjugation, 
destined  to  be  the  most  gigantic  which  the  world  has  ever 
seen,  was  begun  by  the  Federal  government  against  the  se- 
ceding States  in  complete  and  amazing  disregard  of  the  foun- 
dation principle  of  its  own  existence,  as  affirmed  in  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  that  governments  derive  their 
just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the  governed." 

But  let  us  hear  what  Mr.  Lincoln  himself  has  to  say  on 
this  question,  and  with  his  testimony  we  shall  regard  the 
question  as  conclusively  settled.  In  reply  to  a  committee  from 
Chicago  sent  to  intercede  with  him  to  be  relieved  from  send- 
ing more  troops  from  that  city  to  the  Northern  armies,  Mr. 
Lincoln  said  in  a  tone  of  bitterness  :  "Gentlemen,  after  Bos- 
ton, Chicago  has  been  the  chief  instrument  in  bringing  this 
war  on  the  country.  The  Northwest  has  opposed  the  South, 
as  New  England  has  opposed  the  South.  It  is  you  who  are 
largely  responsible  for  making  blood  flow  as  it  has.  You 
called  for  war  until  we  had  it ;  you  called  for  emancipation, 
and  I  have  given  it  to  you.  Whatever  you  have  asked,  you 
have  had.  Now  you  come  here  begging  to  be  let  off.  You 
ought  to  be  ashamed  of  yourselves."  (See  Tarbell's  "Life  of 
Lincoln,"  Volume  II.,  p.  149.) 

(3)   Which  side  had  the  legal  right  to  do  what  was  done? 

On  the  column  of  the  monument  erected  to  our  great  civic 
leader  are  the  words  pro  aris  et  focis,  meaning  that  the  real 
cause   of   the    South   was   that   we   fought   in   defense   of   our 
altars  and  our  firesides.     And  the  man  who  would  not 
"Strike  for  his  altars  and  his  fires, 
God  and  his  native  land" 
is  a  craven  and  a  coward  and  unworthy  even  of  the  name  of 
man.      Our    country    was    invaded    by    armed    men    intent    on 
coercion  and  conquest.     We  met  them  on  the  threshold  and 
beat  them  and  drove  them  back  as  long  as  we  had  anything 
to  eat  or  strength  to  fight  with.     We  could  do  no  more,  we 
could  do  no  less,  and  history,  our  children,  and  even  many  of 
our  former  enemies  now  applaud  our  conduct.    . 


1 4  Report  of  U.  C.  V.  History  Committee. 

There  were,  however,  two,  and  but  two,  questions  really 
involved  in  the  conflict.  We  can  scarcely  do  more  than  state 
these  and  cite  some  of  the  many  Northern  authorities  to  sus- 
tain the  position  that  the  South  was  right  on  both  of  these. 
They  were:  (i)  The  right  of  a  State  to  secede,  and  (2)  the 
right  of  the  Federal  government  to  coerce  a  seceding  State. 
As  to  the  first  of  these  questions,  the  late  Judge  Black,  of 
Pennsylvania,  said  what  is  true :  "Secession,  like  slavery,  was 
first  planted  in  New  England.  There  it  grew  and  flourished 
and  spread  its  branches  far  over  the  land  before  it 
was  ever  dreamed  of  at  the  South."  And  he  further  says 
that  John  Quincy  Adams,  in  1839,  and  Abraham  Lincoln,  in 
1847,  made  elaborate  arguments  in  favor  of  the  legal  right  of 
a  State  to  secede. 

Mr.  William  Rawle,  also  late  of  Pennsylvania,  in  his  work 
on  the  Constitution,  the  text-book  used  at  West  Point  be- 
fore the  war,  says :  "It  depends  on  the  State  itself  to  retain 
or  abolish  the  principle  of  representation,  because  it  depends 
on  itself  whether  it  will  continue  a  member  of  the  Union." 

Timothy  Pickering,  Josiah  Quincy,  and  Mr.  Henry  Cabot 
Lodge,  all  of  Massachusetts,  the  late  Horace  Greeley,  Gold- 
win  Smith,  General  Don  Piet,  of  the  Federal  army,  and  the 
Hartford  Convention  all  asserted  and  affirmed  the  same  doc- 
trine. And  we  know  that  had  not  this  right  been  understood 
to  exist  at  the  time  of  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  it 
would  never  have  been  adopted. 

As  to  the  second  of  these  questions — i.  e.,  the  right  of  the 
Federal  government  to  coerce  a  seceding  State — this  ques- 
tion was  discussed  to  some  extent  in  the  convention  which 
framed  the  Constitution.  Mr.  Madison  (called  the  "Father 
of  the  Constitution")  said:  "The  more  he  reflected  on  the 
use  of  force,  the  more  he  doubted  the  practicability,  the  jus- 
tice, and  the  efficiency  of  it  when  applied  to  people  collectively 
and  not  individually.  A  union  of  the  States  containing  such 
an  ingredient  seemed  to  provide  for  its  own  destruction." 

And  Mr.  Hamilton  said :  "But  how  can  this  force  be  exer- 
cised on  the  States  collectively?  It  is  impossible.  It  amounts 
to  war  between  the  parties.  Foreign  powers  also  will  not 
be  idle  spectators.     They  will  interpose,  and  a  dissolution  of 


Report  of  U.  C.  V.  History  Committee.  ic 

the  Union  will  ensue."  (5th  Mad.  Pap.  140  and  200.)  And 
no  such  right  or  power  can  be  found  anywhere  in  the  Con- 
stitution. 

The  late  James  C.  Carter,  of  New  York  (a  native  of  New 
England),  one  of  the  greatest  lawyers  this  country  has  ever 
produced,  said :  "I  may  hazard  the  opinion  that  if  the  ques- 
tion had  been  raised,  not  in  i860,  but  in  1788,  immediately 
after  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  whether  the  Union,  as 
formed  by  that  instrument,  could  lawfully  treat  the  secession 
of  a  State  as  rebellion  and  suppress  it  by  force,  few  of  those 
who  participated  in  forming  that  instrument  would  have  an- 
swered in  the  affirmative." 

In  November,  i860,  the  New  York  Herald  said :  "Each 
State  is  organized  as  a  complete  government,  holding  the 
purse  and  wielding  the  sword,  possessing  the  right  to  break 
the  tie  of  confederation  as  a  nation  might  break  a  treaty, 
and  to  repel  coercion  as  a  nation  might  repel  invasion.  .  .  . 
Coercion,  if  it  were  possible,  is  out  of  the  question." 

The  question  was  maturely  considered  by  Mr.  Buchanan 
and  his  Cabinet  at  the  close  of  his  administration,  and  it  was 
unanimously  determined  that  no  such  right  existed. 

One  of  the  resolutions  of  the  platform  of  the  Chicago  Con- 
vention, on  which  Mr.  Lincoln  was  elected,  and  which  he  re- 
affirmed in  his  first  inaugural,  was  the  following : 

"Resolved,  That  the  maintenance  inviolate  of  the  rights  of 
the  States,  and  especially  the  right  of  each  State  to  order 
and  control  its  own  domestic  institutions  according  to  its  own 
judgment  exclusively,  is  essential  to  the  balance  of  power  on 
which  the  perfection  and  endurance  of  our  political  fabric 
depends,  and  we  denounce  the  lawless  invasion  by  armed 
force  of 'the  soil  of  any  State  or  Territory,  no  matter  under 
what  pretext,  as  among  the  gravest  of  crimes." 

To  show  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  fully  cognizant  of  the  fact 
that  he  was  committing  this  "gravest  of  crimes"  when  he 
caused  his  armies  to  invade  the  Southern  States,  we  will 
give  his  own  definition  of  the  meaning  of  the  terms  "invasion" 
and  "coercion,"  as  contained  in  his  speech  delivered  at  In- 
dianapolis on  his  journey  to  Washington  to  be  inaugurated 
in   February,    1861.      He    asks:    "What,    then,    is    'coercion?' 


1 6  Report  of  U.  C.  V.  History  Committee. 

What  is  'invasion?'  Would  the  marching  of  an  army  into 
South  Carolina  without  the  consent  of  her  people  and  with 
hostile  intent  toward  them  be  'invasion?'  I  certainly  think 
it  would,  and  it  would  be  'coercion'  also  if  South  Carolinians 
were  forced  to  submit." 

Is  not  this  exactly  what  he  did  to  South  Carolina  and  to 
all  the  other  Southern  States?  And  is  it  not  true  that  this 
"gravest  of  crimes"  having  been  committed  by  him  without  the 
authority  of  Congress,  or  any  legal  right,  was  the  sole  cause 
why  the  Southern  people  went  to  war  ?  We  know  that  such 
is  the  fact,  and  surely  no  further  authorities  can  be  necessary 
to  show  that  the  South  was  right  on  both  of  the  only  two 
questions  involved  in  the  war ;  and  if  it  had  not  resisted  and 
fought  under  the  circumstances  in  which  it  was  placed,  it 
would  have  been  eternally  disgraced. 

We  can  only  state  and  without  discussing  at  all  our  last 
inquiry,  which  is : 

(4)  Which  side  conducted  itself  the  better  and  according 
to  the  rules  of  civilized  warfare  pending  the  conflict? 

With  the  notoriously  infamous  records  of  the  conduct  of 
Sheridan,  Hunter,  and  Milroy  in  the  Valley  (to  say  nothing 
of  how  far  Grant  participated  in  that  conduct),  of  that  of 
Pope  and  Steinwehr  in  Piedmont,  Va.,  of  that  of  Butler  in 
Norfolk  and  New  Orleans,  and,  worse  than  all,  the  confessed 
vandalism  of  Sherman  on  his  "March  to  the  Sea,"  together 
with  the  burning  of  Atlanta  and  Columbia,  the  last  stimu- 
lated and  encouraged  by  Halleck,  the  chief  of  staff  of  the 
armies  of  the  Union,  and  contrast  all  this  with  the  humane 
order  of  General  Lee,  on  his  campaign  of  invasion  into  Penn- 
sylvania, and  the  conduct  of  his  army  in  that  campaign,  and 
there  can  be  but  one  answer  to  this  inquiry.  That  answer  is 
that  the  South  did  right  and  that  the  North  did  wrong. 

"God  holds  the  scales  of  justice; 

He  will  measure  praise  and  blame; 

And  the   South  will   stand  the  verdict, 

And  will  stand  it  without  shame." 


Gaylord  Bros. 

Makers 

Syracuse,  N.  Y. 

PAT.  JAN.  21.  1308 


UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 

00032722867 

FOR  USE  ONLY  IN 
THE  NORTH  CAROLINA  COLLECTION 


28957 


